


All Flights Grounded

by songofsunset



Category: Free!
Genre: Airport AU, M/M, Meet!cute, Nagisa likes sweets, Regisa - Freeform, Rei is confused (but not unpleasantly so) by Nagisa, This could be read as gen but please believe me it was meant to be shippy and I ship it like burning, more or less
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-28
Updated: 2014-07-28
Packaged: 2018-02-10 17:56:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2034576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/songofsunset/pseuds/songofsunset
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Rei was trapped in the airport. Rei was trapped in the airport between flights, possibly overnight, probably for at least several hours, because there was a stupid snowstorm and flights were grounded, and he was trapped in the airport and there was nothing he could do about it."</p><p>And then Nagisa shows up. Aw yeah.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Flights Grounded

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, this is more words than I'd intended to write of Rei and Nagisa getting snowed into an airport overnight, as inspired by the last bullet point on this tumblr post [bit.ly/UEjQSq] and originally posted to my tumblr.
> 
> Any airport inaccuracies are either because all my experience in flying (of which I have a decent amount) are Americas and Europe based, or because I just decided to ignore something for the sake of the story :P Same goes with any cultural stuff as well, but tell me if there's something big I should look into :)
> 
> Lemmie know what you think, and enjoy the fluff!

Rei was trapped in the airport. Rei was trapped in the airport between flights, possibly overnight, probably for at least several hours, because there was a stupid snowstorm and flights were grounded, and he was trapped in the airport and there was nothing he could do about it.

And to make matters worse, his luggage was nowhere to be found. He was beginning to regret coming to Australia for vacation, no matter how compelling escaping the summer heat had been.

"What do you mean it wasn’t on the plane?" he asked, more than slightly panicked, but trying to use his best English.

"Sir, there’s nothing I can do, it seems to have already been loaded on a separate flight to your destination"

"But what am I supposed to do without my luggage? What am I supposed to wear? Or read? Or anything?" Sure, he had his backpack, but that was mostly just his camera and jacket and laptop!

"Sir, I’m sure you’ll manage" The attendant said, in the tone of incredibly done but contractually-polite customer service workers everywhere. "You’ll just have to catch up with it on the flight that will be provided for you sometime tomorrow. In the meantime, feel free to make yourself at home in the gate seating area, or purchase a room at the airport hotel." And she turned to the next person in line in a manner that left no room for debate.

"What the hell", he muttered to himself (in Japanese, thank you very much, he wouldn’t complain so openly in front of someone who had no fault in his situation, but it couldn’t hurt if all she spoke was English). He looked his stack of boarding passes and passports and identification materials, and the timetable he’d so carefully made up in his notebook, and sighed.

"Excuse me", someone said behind him, and, hold on, that wasn’t English, like all the indistinct muttering around him, that was proper, native, Japanese. Rei whirled around, looking for the speaker, and then had to look down several more inches. There was a short kid, about his age, with blonde hair and an infectious smile. And, despite the blonde hair, he was still clearly Japanese.

"Were you on that flight that just got cancelled?" The kid asked, still in Japanese, and far too cheerfully for someone who’d just gotten stranded in an airport for who knows how long. "So was I!"

"Good for you?" Rei said, unsure of where this was going.

"I was thinking that we should stick together!", the kid said. "Your English seems to be way better than mine, and we can try and keep each other from getting bored while we’re waiting!"

"I’m sure I can manage on my-" Rei started to say, but the kid cut him off.

"I’m Nagisa! Can I call you Rei?"

"How did you-" Rei started again, but the kid- Nagisa, cut him off again.

"Your boarding pass is right there. We both have girly names, isn’t that awesome? Back home I’ve got three other friends who have the same thing, we could start a club or something!"

"I don’t think-" Rei wasn’t sure why he kept trying to get a word in edgewise, it was clear that this kid wasn’t going to take no for an answer.

"Well, one of them is down here in Australia right now, his name is Rin and he’s who I was visiting! But that’s not the point," Nagisa said, bouncing up and down slightly, "The point is that messing around on the Wi-Fi is gets old really quickly, and I’ve got some movies on my laptop so we should watch those! And, oh! A couple episodes of that new Drama everyone is talking about! The historical fantasy one with the gay people in the desert freaking out about water- you interested?" Nagisa grinned again, and it took Rei a moment to process that Nagisa had stopped talking and was actually waiting for his input on something.

And darn it if Dramas weren’t Rei’s weakness. He’d been meaning to watch that historical one for a while, and he couldn’t really pass up such a well-timed opportunity. He pushed his glasses up and, as noncommittally as he could, said “I suppose watching a few episodes of that drama couldn’t hurt.”

"Excellent!" Nagisa said, and grabbed Rei’s arm, dragging him off to a corner of the seating area with access to a power outlet.

———

Three hours later, Rei found himself clutching Nagisa, who was clutching him right back, both of them sobbing at the closing credits about how “NO DON’T GO YOU’RE PERFECT FOR EACH OTHER”

"IT WAS JUST A MISUNDERSTANDING HE WANTED YOU TO STAY HE LOVES YOU THIS ISN’T BEAUTIFUL AT ALL"

"OH MY GOD YOU CAN’T DO THIS JUST TALK TO EACH OTHER THIS IS NOT OKAYYYYYYYY I DON’T CARE IF YOU HAVE A FATAL DISEASE AND A FIANCE JUST TALK TO EACH OTHERRRRRR"

Rei took a few moments to collect himself, then turned to Nagisa and urgently asked “This isn’t all there is, right? Right?”

Nagisa shook his head, wiping a few tears out of his eyes “The next episode doesn’t come out for another week”.

"Damn." Rei wasn’t sure what he’d do in the meantime.

"I know, right? You wanna watch some cast interviews?" And Rei smiled slightly, because Nagisa was already pulling them up without even waiting for an answer.

———

The sun was finally going down, insofar as that mattered at all when everything outside was in shades of white and grey and black regardless. The English news channels that apparently played nonstop on the televisions in the terminal were saying something about “emergency road closings” and “all flights grounded”, but most of it was too fast for Rei to catch more than about every third word.

They had watched through most of Nagisa’s stock of movies, and he’d checked his email and all his websites far too many times, and the grey speckled walls of the airport were starting to be too much for him. Nagisa was looking similarly put upon, playing through some game on his cell phone like it was the only thing between him and madness.

"Let’s go get some food or something" Rei suggested, and Nagisa perked up immediately, snapping his phone shut so fast that Rei was tempted to count to make sure he still had all his fingers.

"Oh yeah! Awesome idea! Oh man, I wonder what they have here! Come on, come on, let’s go check the map!"

———

They ended up at a horribly overpriced McDonalds, only getting sidetracked twice so Nagisa could first drool into the window of an already closed chocolate store, and then again at a closed sports shop with a swimming display in their window. Which, why was there a sports shop in an airport? And why were they advertising swimsuits during the winter? 

He sighed, watching Nagisa prance ahead of him on one the moving walkways that were everywhere in this airport and figured it made about as much sense any of the other random shops they’d passed so far. At least there hadn’t been animatronic crocodiles in the window or anything, that had been way more creepy than adorable.

Rei ordered a burger and fries, and some ice water. Nagisa ordered three burgers, two hot-fudge sundaes, an extra-large soda, and resolved loudly to steal some fries from Rei. Rei frowned, but found he didn’t mind so much when Nagisa forced a sundae on him and told him to eat it or else, cuz he totally needed the sweetening. (unless he was lactose intolerant, and, was he lactose intolerant? Cuz he’d totally eat it if Rei literally couldn’t but if not he was totally not getting out of no way no how that ice-cream was for Rei and he was gonna eat it already. Rei ate it.)

The size of the soda was ungodly, though, literally larger than Nagisa’s head. Rei had no idea why such things even existed, but Nagisa seemed to be all in favor. He brought it back the gate with him, slurping loudly the whole way.

Rei tried to grind his teeth quietly.

———

Airport employees were unloading cots at the other end of the seating area, but judging by the crowd of people gathering around, there was no way he and Nagisa would manage to get one.

"So what would be best to do for the night, do you think?" Rei asked, because Nagisa seemed to have a pretty good handle on this whole Stuck In an Airport thing. "Should we get hotel rooms?"

"Nahhh" Nagisa said, doodling penguins on Rei’s notebook with a blue marker he seemed to have produced out of nowhere. "Those places are way too expensive. Better to just to hang out here overnight. The corner isn’t that bad, and they should at least have a couple blankets or something we can borrow. You wanna go ask about that? Or we can just use our backpacks as pillows."

Rei looked over at the customer service desk. The lady he’d talked to earlier was gone, replaced by young man with a moustache who looked like he’d had far too much coffee, and far too little sleep.

"I think I’m good", Rei said. "Backpacks will work fine for one night.

Nagisa snorted, and began drawing a penguin chasing after a butterfly.

———

The only problem, Rei thought, at 2 in the morning in the half lit seating area, was that the damn television wouldn’t turn off.

Nagisa had somehow passed out right away, despite his massive soda earlier, and people were snoring on cots, or the floor, or lolling sideways on the airport seating all around them. But Rei was lying there between Nagisa and the wall, on the too-hard carpeting with the incessant chattering of some late night news host, going on, and on, and on about the weather, and sleep just wasn’t happening.

Rei had heard ENOUGH about the weather.

If he ever heard another word about the weather, he might just murder someone.

Across the terminal, the news anchor’s soulless face grinned at him, and Rei resisted the urge to bang his forehead against the wall.

Fucking WEATHER.

He heard Nagisa muttering behind him, but didn’t think much of it until he felt Nagisa’s arms latch onto him from behind.

Rei froze, train of thought suddenly derailed. “N-Nagisa-san?” he asked, but Nagisa just muttered something about penguins. He was a sleep cuddler, then, and Rei decided that he didn’t really mind that much. He just hoped it wouldn’t be awkward in the morning.

———

When Rei woke up, all the lights were back on, and and it seemed sunny outside, and people were milling about like something was actually happening, and Nagisa was gone.

Temporarily, judging by his discarded backpack and jacket, so Rei rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and jammed his glasses on his face, and pulled his laptop out to check on the weather. It was, apparently, warming up, and they should manage to get out of here sometime this morning. While he was drafting a quick email to his family about this happy turn of events, Nagisa came trotting up, cheerful as always, arms laden with coffee, and two bags of what looked like McDonalds.

"Oh, you’re awake!" Nagisa said, grinning. "Awesome! Our flight is on in a couple of hours, and I had to pee, so I went ahead and got us some breakfast on the way back! Do you want the sausage egg bagel, or the sausage egg muffin?"

"No wonder you had to pee, with all the soda you drank" Rei said, but actually, finding a bathroom sounded like the right sort of idea, come to think of it. "You decide, they’re both fine with me. I’m gonna go to the bathroom first, I’ll be back shortly."

Nagisa sat down and started fishing around in the bags. “It’s to your right! And bring some napkins, I forgot them!”

———

The sausage-egg bagel was delicious, if not very healthy, and he and Nagisa ended up just talking for the next few hours until their flight came. Nagisa swam as a hobby, apparently, and used to swim with his friends. He thought that Rei’s track and pole-vaulting was seriously cool, and decided that Rei’s confusion with the whole idea of swimming was “Hilarious but totally misguided, Rei-san! If Haru could hear you he’d never forgive you! And if you ever even saw him swimming you’d change your mind, 100%”

They bickered about this good-naturedly, and Rei finally admitted that he’d never learned to swim. Nagisa pretended to be horrified, and promised to give him lessons if they ever got stranded in an airport with a swimming pool- “I’d even lend you one of my swimsuits and everything!”

Rei wasn’t so sure about this, but suddenly the woman at the front desk was calling them in for boarding, and Rei was in the first group and Nagisa was in the last, and they were packing their stuff and fishing out their documents and getting in line and- Rei was alone, hanging out in his seat at the back of the plane, sitting next to a complete stranger.

And, had Nagisa really been a complete stranger only yesterday? They hadn’t even exchanged numbers or anything, and there was no reason he’d ever see Nagisa again for anything, except as a tiny blonde speck right up at the front of the plane. And it was an enormous international plane, 10 seats wide with two separate aisles, and Nagisa was in the other aisle and there was no good way to get to him, and there was a bathroom between them so there wasn’t even a chance Nagisa would come back to use the one behind Rei and run into him then, and Rei had no real reason to make a point of finding Nagisa, because they had just been hanging out at the airport because they had no other choice, right? There was no reason to think that Nagisa even wanted to stay in contact with him or that their interactions had been anything more than casual, and Nagisa already had plenty of friends, there’d be no reason for him to want to stay in touch with a random guy he’d met in an airport and this was so utterly pointless, why was Rei even thinking about this at all.

Rei slumped down in his seat miserably, ignoring both his seatmate and the woman doing the safety demonstration and flipped through a catalog instead. When the plane finally took off and the screens went active, Rei plugged in his headphones and watched a movie in the tiny screen embedded in the back of the chair in front of him.

It was in English, and the subtitles weren’t very good.

When, several hours later, they arrived at their destination and they were all disembarking, Rei kept his eyes open, but by the time he’d gotten up there, Nagisa had already left the plane.

———

When Rei finally got to the Baggage Claim, suitcases were already moving along the conveyor belt. Miraculously, his showed up after only 5 minutes of waiting, and he rolled it with him to a bench in the corner, idly thinking about moving his jacket into his suitcase now that he was back in the proper summer weather of the Northern Hemisphere, but when he opened his backpack to fish out his jacket, he froze.

Was that- Rei was pretty sure he hadn’t brought any boxes of chocolate with him, even (and especially) tiny and adorable sampler boxes.

Hardly breathing, Rei pulled the box of chocolate out of his backpack, waiting for a long moment, and looking at all sides of the box before opening it. Inside, on the thin paper on top of the chocolates was scrawled a sloppy message in blue marker.

“Hey! I hope your trip goes well :) I had a great time hanging out with you, and if you ever want to stay in contact, here’s my number!” And then there was Nagisa’s number (!!!) surrounded by tiny doodles of butterflies.

Rei was sure he was smiling like an idiot, but he pulled out his phone, and composed a quick message along the lines of ‘Hey, this is Rei and thank you for the chocolates and your number and I had a great time’- (and, did he and Nagisa have the same area code? Did that mean they lived near each other? Or had recently??? Oh my god it totally did.)

He pressed send before he could freak out too much about the contents of the message, and then there was a “Ding!” of a received text right behind him, and Rei whirled around because OH MY GOD WHEN DID SOMEONE GET BEHIND HIM AND-

“Hey”, Nagisa said, smiling the most careful smile Rei had seen on his face yet. “Wanna go through customs together? I hear it’s more fun if you have someone to wait in line with you”

“Sure” Rei said, with the distinct feeling that something had gotten in his throat. Happiness, maybe. “Sure, we can totally do that”

And Rei didn’t even have to translate the signs to guide them there.

**Author's Note:**

> Nagisa totally got the chocolates in the morning at the same time as he was getting breakfast and hid them in the extra McDonalds bag in case Rei was already up (good call) and wrote the note and hid it in Rei’s backpack while he was off at the bathroom. That’s why you always take your luggage with you everywhere you go in the airport, kids! Strange people may do things to it! ;D
> 
> At customs the person asks him if he has any food to declare, and Rei slams the tiny sampler box on the counter and is like “THAT GUY BOUGHT ME THESE CHOCOLATES BUT THEY’RE FROM THE AIRPORT SO IT’S OKAY AND LOOK HE BOUGHT ME THESE CHOCOLATES AND GAVE ME HIS NUMBER AND :D :D :D :D :D” and the guard is like “WOW CHILL” but it secretly makes the guard's day :>


End file.
